Pools
up & down: Sadly but probably inevitably, the large informal
areas of shallow pools at Dyers Common industrial estates near the Severn
Estuary edge, which hosted lapwings and other water birds, have now been almost
entirely filled in as the ground is built up for further development – though a
small new reedy pool has been created in recent developments at the nearby
shopping centre...

Albatross skeleton
by Marco Vinci

Bird
bones: I watched a fascinating TV programme on bird bones. Two things that
struck me:

- The albatross with its 3m
wing span, has a shoulder joint that locks into place when flying, and a rigid
bone support at its ‘elbow’, that together mean it needs virtually no actual
muscle to glide endlessly as it does throughout its life – almost like being
suspended comfortably from an organic hang-glider!

- Birds that hunt underwater
like penguins have needed to re-evolve heavier bones - apparently the guillemot is one of the few birds that
truly spans both effective flight and underwater swimming...

Waxwings: There are waxwings feeding
in the carpark of a local large supermarket, and a colleague wrote: ‘Still lots
of big rowan berries in the car park of the Tesco Extra that they seem to be
ignoring at present. I met a chap a few years ago who had been doing research
on waxwings & he said they could smell the sugar content of the various
berries and went for those with the highest sugar content. So berries that look
good to our eyes might not look (or rather smell) so good to waxwings. But as
they devour them, I guess their priorities change.’

Birds & Berries
photo by Des Bowring

Birds & Berries: I responded: ‘That is very interesting
about waxwings being able to smell the sugar content of berries.

Presumably
most foraging birds will have equivalent abilities. Reading that fascinating
book on Birds & Berries a few years, ago, it included research on the food
content (sugars, proteins, fats) of different berries with their popularity
with different bird species, and at different times of the year. Speed was part
of the equation - very watery berries that could be gulped quickly were
sometimes better value than denser berries the bird couldn't gulp down easily.
It was a very tricky, time-consuming piece of work, dealing with wild birds
rather than lab animals.’

Charnia masoni
by Smith609

Charnia: I recently joined a
geology trip – a pilgrimage! - to Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, home of the
fossils of some of the oldest multi-celled organisms in the world. It’s a
higher area amongst the otherwise flat plains of this easterly Midlands county,
rugged and full of oaks. Many
of its craggy rocks are of ancient volcanic origin, dating back through 600
million years toPrecambriantimes; and contain the first ever
recorded discovery ofCharniamasoni, the earliest known large, complex
fossilised species on record. (The rocks of Charnwood Forest still remain the
only place inWestern Europewhere these Precambrian fossils have
been found.)

As the sun lowered, we visited the elevated sloping
outcrop containing the fossils. Some are a few inches long and look like
delicate leaves inlaid into the rock surface, hard to find and to see – but
easier in low evening light; while their bases look like seaweed holdfasts making
circular indentations in the rock. Many have been crudely hammered where people
have tried to chip them out. But it felt extraordinary to be able to lay ones
hand on this pioneering organism – our almost-ancestor, whose fractal form
turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end, but whose close relatives found in
Australia were the start of an explosion of the new complex life forms who are
our predecessors.

Precious
things:
There was a small but perfectly-formed exhibition at Bristol Museum called ‘Stone

Ancient gold ingotby Frank Basford

Age to Iron Age’, displaying some of their choice artefacts - exquisite stone
and bronze axe heads, refined jewellery etc. One object was a small ingot of
gold: it sat quietly on its shelf just glowing, and I was struck yet again with
the power of its imperishability. When people say of gold and diamonds – ‘Oh,
they’re only valuable because humans make thems so’ - they misunderstand that
some things have an intirinsic value. Gold is the only natural mineral / element
that simply won’t tarnish or decay, that taken from deep underground or from the
sea floor or a cesspit or an acid bog

after hundreds or thousands of years,
comes forth gleaming as brightly and purely as the day nature forged it. And
diamonds are the hardest natural substance – treat them as rough as you like,
abrade them all their life non-synthetically, and their crystal beauty remains
undimmed.

Avant
Garde Pigeon: I saw a funny pigeon today in a local car park - I call it Avant Garde
pigeon because of its unusual stylish

Avant garde pigeon

asymmetrical markings!

Poured
Pewter:
Low tide, low sun peering through a murky day. Mud banks south side flowing
smoothly down to the water – in this subdued light, shining like sheets of poured
pewter. You don’t realise how fast the river is running until a gull lands on
the water and is immediately thrust fast downstream...

Running
across the sky: Stoke Lodge Estate where I do weekly art classes is full of
grey squirrels. Today they were running through the very fine upper branches of
some woodland trees – so fine that, outlined against a bright background, the
squirrels appeared simply to be running across the sky...

Atmospheric phenomena: Up on the
Marshfield hills on this changeable day with cumulus, mist and assorted
weathers, we saw rainbows, and ‘sun-dogs’ showing some of their rainbow arc around
the

Nacreous clouds
by Thincat

sun. We also saw another phenomenon that
I have not seen before: above the sun, while it had a sun-dog arc to its left,
almost overhead was another smaller circle of rainbow light. I quizzed a friend
who flies but he hadn’t encountered this. However a recent newspaper showed a beautiful
photo of rainbow nacreous clouds above Yorkshire – apparently a phenomenon of ice
crystals very high in the atmosphere, probably here a result of a polar vortex
encroaching Britian - so the Marshfield phenomenon may be linked...

Cuttlefish
magic: My computing friend is working on a light suit for some acrobats which
will express their movements through changes in speed, colour and rhythm of the
LED strips incorporated. His test LED strip is fastened to

Cuttlefish
by Tongjin

the edge of his
desk, and undulating colours run up and down it exactly like those that cuttlefish
use on their bodies to woo their mates... I feel humans could learn a trick or
two there of a more beautiful way to approach potential partners...

February

Waxwings: I went to
watch the waxwings who seem to have made a long-term home of this large
supermarket car park with its many tempting rowan trees full of berries.
Thirteen of these beautiful birds were sitting in the top of big oak trees
behind the park, and coming down at regular

Waxwing at Tesco's
by Rod Holbrook

intervals to neatly pluck one
rowanberry apiece from their chosen tree, then return with it to the oaks to
eat... Funny to see the little group of
bird watchers from far and wide, huddled by the car wash to catch the action
and rather impervious to the shoppers around them.

Chaffinch
& Bramblings: We went on a very local walk into an area that yet
was quite unknown to us, and full of secretive surprises. Climbing a hill,
about forty bright chaffinches were feeding on a great area of discarded grain
which was now sprouting. A little further on, five female bramblings in modest
winter plumage sat huddled together in a hedgerow – a pretty finch that I
rarely see...

River Frome in central Bristolby Dr Duncan Pepper

Policing
urban wildlife: A friend who lives in the centre of Bristol was
walking along the Frome (one of many small rivers that still traverse the city,
though often culverted and hidden) where it runs in a deep cutting by
industrial buildings. She saw the kingfisher whose regular patch this is, and
pointed it out to a policeman who also had his beat along there. He responded
by pulling out his smartphone and showing her recent pictures of an otter
disporting in the

river... apparently this has been his beat for 20 years and
he has seen a lot of wildlife there!

Iconic
Bristol: I stopped by the now disused Filton Airfield,

Concorde coming into Filton runway
by John Allan

where the iconic Concorde
plane was built and tested and where one plane is still parked and open to
visitors. A large fine-looking fox appeared on the far side of the runway and walked right in front of the parked Concord –
I thought that was a fine conjunction of iconic Bristol symbols – the plane,
and the urban fox for which Bristol is also famous!

Sardinia: I went on a
geology trip in Sardinia – an odd plain-but-interesting island. It grows rice
and saffon, flamingos stud its coastal lagoons, huge areas still consist of
native maquis

Flamingos in Sardinia
by Jerry Gunner

(Mediterranean scrub) held ancestrally and still now as common
land.

March

Walking behind Easter Compton towards
Dyers Common industrial estate on this very early Spring

Wild plum
by Rich Tea

day, the drainage rhine
banks were covered with flowering celandine, wild plum were in blossom, and
birds were out in force. In the hedgerow I inspected a lovely small deep nest
of unlined grasses – an unfinished robin’s nest?

Squirrel
love: I watched a pair grey squirrels in a tree – first mock-fighting, then
snuggling lovingly up together...

Foraging
Rooks:
On a busy main road out of Bristol, ten rooks were foraging along the roadside gutters
as the vehicles zipped right by them – but what were they looking for? It always
seems a surprise to find rooks – often shy birds that only seem to favour the
company of other rooks - away from their more rural habitats and in harsher manmade
environments. Yet they love to nest by motorways, in service stations and
schools, and nesting season in particular seems to find them foraging or
scavenging in unusual situations...

Rook
by Andreas Trepte

More
‘scavenging’ rooks? On the main road through the middle of Carbis Bay
(a small town just outside St Ives) I
watched rooks on the street lights and power lines, inspecting the road below...

At the Taunton Service Station
on the M5 motorway coming home, there were rookeries on both sides of the car park
totalling at least fifty nests, including three or more in trees actually arching
over the building’s busy main entrances... Ten or more rooks were on the ground
outside a parked car where the driver was sitting eating her sandwiches: they
were looking up into the car and doing a ‘begging’ routine... so very un-rook-like!
But maybe this apparent scavenging behaviour is to do with egg-laying and
hungering for some specific nutrients?

Brimstone
by AJC1

A
sheltered lane at Pilning Wetlands: Wherever was sheltered from the harsh
north-easterly wind held abundant flying insects, including a Brimstone, a Peacock
and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies...

Smart
Wagtail: On the moors I saw an outstandingly
smart grey wagtail: he was a vivid yellow from stem to stern
beneath, with immaculate black and greys
above...

Evening
Jackdaws: From my loft at 7.30pm last night which is sunset, I watched scores of
jackdaws flying north-east across our house to their still-mysterious roost
sites... In my head I imagine them going to the high wood of Winterbourne’s
Bury Hill which forms a rather magical misty rise a few miles due east from us.
But they actually always go north-east – what is there? Perhaps the
little

Latteridge
by Jonathan Billinger

hamlet called Latteridge, which actually feels far more remote than its
position warrants? Roosts remain mysterious...

April

‘Pimp
my tractor’: On a walk on a high hill above Bristol, we watched a local driving a
massive new tractor finished in deep metallic purple-red, with the front
radiator sculpted in the form of a devilish animal head. It was an unusual example
of pimping a vehicle, and when our walk
leader pointed out its 2017 vintage – I thought how loath the owner must be to
use it and risk scratching its pristine beauty!

Even
bolder Jackdaws: Over the years the jackdaws who have colonised our
street have gone slowly from very timid to ever bolder... I was gardening in
the small vegetable plot at the end of our back garden, and as I faced it, a
jackdaw landed a few metres away at the other end of the plot and calmly strolled
towards me... In the early days the jackdaws wouldn’t even come into the
garden; considerably later they felt able to play ‘grandmother’s footsteps’
where they would creep closer to me but only as long as I kept facing away – then
they would still fly off as soon as I turned round. And look at them now – as
bold as brass!

St Mark's
Flies: On
Solsbury Hill above Bath on the 18 April, the St Mark's Flies were out in numbers
- seven days earlier than the day of Saint Mark on 25 April for whom they were
named, and whose feast day they often hit with spooky accuracy.... easy to
identify as they fly with dangling legs.

Horse Chestnut blossom
by P Caroline

We wondered why, and it seems that
they and other ‘danglers’ use the legs to clasp mates and prey.

Is it a late
or early Spring? The horse chestnut and hawthorne trees are out in full
bountiful leaf and bloom, yet many ash and beech trees are still almost bare – making
a strange contrast of lush late spring with only-just-out-of-winter...

May

Handkerchief Tree at Shepperdine

Shepperdine
snapshots... On a walk near the estuary north of Bristol, we saw a beautiful Handkerchief
Tree in full blossom –its exotic large flowers indeed like fine pieces of
gathered cream material...

Along the estuary, shelduck had
left their webbed tracks in the mud in an evocative record of their
wanderings...

In the distance a little boat
was struggling up river hard against the wind and tide – getting soaked as it
hit each wave and the north-east wind blew great drafts of

Shelduck tracks at Shepperdine

spray back down its
length...

BBS
Moan: For the second year running I participated in the British Trust for
Ornithology’s Breeding Bird Survey, which entails two 2km walks in Ingst on the
South Gloucestershire levels near the estuary with complex recording
strategies, early in the morning in April and May. I seemed to have a lot more
trouble than my (mostly male) colleagues, and finally I had to vent on the
Bristol Wildlife forum:

‘Besides the
actual surveys. in total I've now gone round that damn patch a whole load of
times - trying to get used to the transects and those damn distances, doing the
environment survey, pruning the almost-impassable overgrown stile-bridges,
little legs soaked in over-long grass, little boots clotted up like plates from
muddy field, getting chased back by bullocks, always carrying stuff that gets
wet and dropped and lost..... Too early in the morning for my bird-walking
friend to be willing to help me with it...

Every single
time I have started with two pens, found one unsuitable (ink runs), dropped the
next while going over stile - then lost it in a rhine or deep grass. Then
reduced to using a drawing pencil dredged from depths of bag. Oh the clumsiness
of juggling clipboard, pens and binoculars. Bins usually hauled up too late and
birds have flown. Then the thought of having to enter the data... grudge
drudge... But of course I love it really. Just having a moan...’

The
Swifts are back! It’s the seventh of May and the Swifts are back –
five of them circling joyfully above our Filton patch...

birdwatching abroad is not just ticking off names on
a list: every new bird is a character who enters and embeds itself in your life
full of its unique personality and charm, its habitat, its mannerisms...

Special
sights & experiences:

- A nightingale singing at
every stop...

- Honey Buzzards migrating
across Mostar...

- Seeking the Scops Owls late
at night in old Mostar amongst the minarets, and hearing their single-note call
all night long...

- Standing on a bridge across
the Nervetna River on the industrial outskirts of Mostar, to watch Pallid
Swifts nesting beneath, emerge at a million miles an hour and shoot away,
strong and pale...

Black-winged Stiltsby Rhyzkov Sergey

- A short distance from
Mostar, an extensive sand quarry with a bird-friendly owner, whose rock

faces
house literally thousands of sand martin pairs, and hundreds of bee-eater
pairs. The noise! The excitement! Like a giant beehive...

- On the Nervetna delta in Croatia
– Black-winged Stilts, surely the most exquisite, elegant birds of all with
their outrageously long red legs...

...and the shockingly tropical
size and exoticness of Bee Eaters – yet so common almost everywhere we went!

- Up in the mountains – Sombre
Tits, little loves that I initially thought were Blackcaps... Swathes of

Gentians

deep
blue gentians...

- On wild limestone uplands –
the fabulous blues of Rock and Blue Rock Thrushes... and Ortolan Buntings who
had picked a

Blue Rock Thrush
by Suk Trippier

most eccentric bleak spot for their nesting (apparently it is
their wont to pick ‘untypical’ spots!). Who doesn’t love a Bunting! – and there
were so many species to search for, stout, cheerful and colourful, heads
chucked up in song...

- In a Muslim area, a teenage
girl in jeans and backpack watching the family flock of sheep with her two
massive mountain dogs, while reading a
book...

- First views of a male
Montagu’s Harrier – the huge grey wings and that unbelievably graceful,
balletic flight...

- Wide, flat empty limestone
valley bottoms with natural meadows, again full of lovely birds, butterflies,
flowers... Old lady making her own sage-flavoured mead... The two-foot bulky bronze
Glass Lizards who love to sunbathe on the gravelly road verges (and are prey of
the Short-toed Snake Eagles hunting above)... Turtle Doves pottering along the
road...

Turtle Dove 'pottering'...
by Suk Trippier

Buna

- BlagajVillage, Buna river
and cliffs: A dramatic beauty spot with a Dervish monastery

War-torn:
Marks of war were ubiquitous. Up into the Dinaric Alp mountains, ‘Beware
Mines’ signs lined the road (mines being kept ‘just in case’), and we were
warned not to stray off the road for a pee... Mostar was full of

'Don't Forget 1993'Mostar Bridge

unrestored
buildings whose roofs, doors and windows had been removed leaving just stone
shells. Wherever buildings hadn’t been repaired, gun shot marked every surface
– and this was true no matter how densely urban or remote the place we visited,
or how humble the building. A striking example was a multi-storey block of
flats on Mostar’s main street, all surfaces re-plastered except for a
full-height flanking wall left disfigured... it was impossible not to think of
the women, children and old people who had either fled or had

'Mines!'

cowered within...
Apparently there was no international help to rebuild and had to be done
entirely by the people themselves, so the general spruceness seems a

Shelled flatsCentral Mostar

marvel.
But even though there is obviously a massive will to move on from old wounds,
we all felt how hard it must be and how much bitterness and unfairness must
lurk, winners and losers... But we were fascinated by the ancient integration
of Muslim and Christian cultures so we couldn’t tell one apart from the other –
we had to be told that our hotel owner and our driver were both Muslims. Old
Mostar holds most of the mosques and other traditional buildings; in early
mornings the muezzin called...

House Martinsby Des Bowring

House
Martins at Sea Mills: The house martins have arrived- about sixteen of
them. As usual they

prefer just one particular little hillock of river mud for
building purposes ('not too wet, not too dry, not too hard, not too soft...’), and a few
nest are already well advanced. And how super-flobbery the Avon mud was today!
– the freshest kidneys jostling together on a butcher’s tray wouldn’t beat
their glossy, cracked, bulging unctuousness.

Abundant
life: Looking out from my loft window, the upper air was full of aerial insect
life, and the garden was full of bees...

Starlings
by Des Bowring

Gangs of Starlings:
I asked a colleague - when you get
small gangs of starlings rushing about and shrilling at this time of
year, but who look black rather than brown - ARE they young, or who or what are
they?

He replied: ‘Could it be relieved
parents - glad to be free of their offspring? - just a guess. Normally the
noise is generated by juveniles flocking together and being very excited - SO
full of joie de vivre!’

Where
do Swifts nest? Yesterday along our road in Filton, and today on
Severn Beach high street, swifts were persistently flying around below eaves
level. I kept a close watch in case I could see them dart into a roof space,
but no luck yet...

‘Our’
Blackbirds - update: Over the last few years I gradually realised that
our original blackbird

with the distinctive refrain and amazing repertoire who
had graced our local area for years, had been replaced by another bird. Why
this had been so difficult to understand was because I still heard snatches of
his refrain between a louder new refrain – one of those cheeky-chappy
‘dooby-doo’ calls. After two or three years of this I finally decided that the
new bird had actually copied the
older bird’s refrain and incorporated it in his own repertoire – but sadly
musically he is a far inferior composer and improviser...

A friend replied: ‘Great stuff. I love the
fact that Blackbirds are 'open-ended learners' and add song phrases from their
parents when they are juveniles (which might be the case in your individual).
Even 'old' birds learn phrases from younger birds and add them to their
repertoire making them irresistible to the ladies!’

Blackbird song is remarkable in its
complexity and richness and ability to incorporate new phrases throughout its
life.....ain't nature wonderful!’

Young Robin
by Peter Trimming

The
robins have fledged! Robins have been nesting in the large but
dilapidated shed at the bottom of our garden. Today on entering, a gapey little
critter faced me from a nearby shelf, and two others fluttered about in
corners... so the youngsters have fledged!

A colleague responded, ‘Yes we had
two fledge back in April in our shed. Robins in sheds are the tops!’

June

Robins
continued: A few days later... though we think the young robins and their parents have
left our shed as far as nesting is concerned - they have now returned and are using it for flying
practice! – a nice safe sheltered space to hone their skills I suppose...

Sparrows are nesting in the
front eaves – a first for us.

Next day: The young robins are
now hopping about outside – their tails just stubs...

Arne
Reserve: We visited the Arne RSPB Reserve in Poole Harbour, an area of rough
heath, piny woodland and lagoonal shores. Among the things I learnt are:

- The reserve holds slow-worms,
smooth snakes and sand lizards – I have never seen the last two. Apparently smooth
snakes eat slow-worms...

Silver-studded Blue
by Gail Hampshire

- The rough heath is full of
the large hillocks of wood ants’ nests – and the snakes eat the ants. The rare
and lovely Silver-studded Blue butterflies with their striking strong bright
white wing borders lay their eggs on the nests, cunningly disguised as the
ants’ eggs – who then take them down and
hatch them!

- Meadow pipits replace
skylarks here in that ecological niche, and they are the local hosts for
cuckoos.

- The local deer include Sika
deer, medium-sized exotic ornamental escapes, now naturalised.

But we were unlucky!
Here’s what we didn’t see that we ‘should’ve’: Any terns at all – almost an
impossibility in Poole Harbour! Nightjars, which have been so open and abundant
that they were roosting in the trees round the cafe in the daytime! Mediterranean
gull, wood lark or osprey... and only a brief glimpse of Dartford warblers though
they are so abundant here...

New
Passage today: A very young pied wagtail was sitting on the low
front wall of a house – fluffy, gapey, striped tail a mere stub. Time – and a
cat – passed without a parent appearing, but finally the parent flew in and
encouraged the youngster off the wall. They flew off together - the youngster
so very much more capable in the air than its innocently foolish demeanour whilst
perched would suggest...

Meanwhile five adjacent sparrows
were having a delicious-looking dust bath on the ground nearby...

Peacock caterpillars
by Gail Hampshire

And down the side lane of the
Wetlands, there were masses of squirming spiky black Peacock butterfly
caterpillars on the nettles.

Botany
at Bigsweir to find Wood Stitchwort: Stitchwort found – unobtrusively
along the wooded Wye path, larger and downier leaves than most stitchworts. Other
nice plants new to me: Three-veined sandwort, round-leaved mint, meadow rue,
common valerian, marsh yellowcress. Also white-legged damselfly, scorpion fly,
& straw dot & longhorn moths – the latter with enormously long
antennae. A hobby attacked a crowd of house martins

Walking back up the Wye we saw
families of mallards about every 50m along the opposite bank with young of
various ages, feeding and swimming - they found a big swirl of froth
particularly delicious... I noticed that one duck family moving very slowly
against the strongly-flowing river, still moved faster than this group of
botanists at work on the other side...!

Little
engineers: Today, the house martins’ selected mud-gathering patch ignored the
Avon’s ample tidal banks and was a meagre puddle on the tow path, much grittier
and less unctuous than the river mud they usually use. I used to be an
architect – how I’d like to know what criteria these little engineers are using
to select their construction material of the day!

Fox hole: I had just dug over a
vegetable bed and covered it with fabric weighted with stones, preparatory to
planting. This morning a quarter of the fabric was pushed aside and a large
hole dug, soil scattered everywhere. It presumably was a fox (though the scale of
the excavation was more like a badger) - was it just after worms or other
invertebrates? Or was it chasing something else?

A colleague repliedl: ‘Hard to say Lois,
but with the baked earth conditions at the moment any pliable soil would be
welcome to both species.’

Tree Mallow
by Meneerke Bloem

Tree
Mallows: the group of tree mallows which have been left to grow undisturbed at
the side of our back lane for a couple of years, now form a stately grove with
about eleven ‘trees’ over 3m in height – a pretty sight.

Hot,
early: Very hot weather. Viewed very early in the morning from my loft – a
nice snapshot of busy bird life: A heron flying south west. A very
newly-fledged jackdaw – its red under skin showing through the thin head
feathers. A young crow looking rather smaller than its parent – presumably
thinner feathers and crouching posture contributing. A gull flying past
carrying a whole sandwich in its mouth! A young sparrow on our eaves by their nest
site.

July

Tidenham
Chase: A botany trip between the rivers Wye & Severn, to study grasses over
an area alternating in bands between acid Carboniferous pale grey micaceous
sandstones and alkali limestones; with old woodlands, heath & grasslands,
and many interesting and

A goshawk flew with a buzzard
(always helpful for size comparison), and then rapidly ascended to a great
height apparently effortlessly... a hobby flew off with prey...

Hummingbird Hawk-moth
by Jerzystrzelecki

Hummingbird
Hawk-moth: At the far end of the car park I saw a massive insect zooming about
that looked like a giant hornet or even a tiny man-made drone... of course it
was a Hummingbird Hawk-moth which I had never seen before. What an
extraordinary animal it is! - I hope I get a closer look when I am lucky enough
to see another. We also saw beautiful a Scarlet Tiger Moth up the lane.

...&
yet more foraging Rooks... On the way to new Pilates classes through Henbury
(considered quite a rough edge of town though bordered by lovely woods and
parks), I have started seeing rooks foraging on the main shopping street –
which is Crow Lane, appropriately corvid-themed...

Marbled White on thistle
by Ian Kirk

Sea
Mills salt marsh: On the banks of the River Avon just west of Sea
Mills station were cormorant, buzzard, lapwing and chiffchaff. The salt marsh rippled
with graceful Sea Couch Grass which looks like fields of wild wheat, now flowering
with pale yellow strands; Sonchus Arvensis was just opening its great raggy sunny
flowers, and a patch of Asparagus fern added more grace. The strong purple
blooms of Spear Thistle were full of feeding Marbled White butterflies, who do
love a nice thistle...

Scenes
from the Loft – about half an hour’s viewing front and back...

- Small flock after flock of
starlings flew low northeast across the house – towards the ‘roosting’ conifers
up the back lane?...

- A gull fiercely mobbed a
sparrowhawk...

- Young crows around the place
– their heads still looking so small with beak/skull junction proportionally clunky,
making their pterodactyl-type ancestry very clear...

- I thought the sparrows
nesting on our front eaves had finished and gone – but the missis just flew up
to the gutter carrying a feather, with mister joining her... will they have
another brood?

Swifts
update: A few years back when our local group of swifts (centred on Filton’s
Millennium Park) was still a sizeable number, I could look out my loft window
pretty much any day, any time and see them flying. However in the last few
years numbers have been dropping (to eight this year), and often they are not
around at all for many days at a time. So perhaps below a certain group number,
they go off and join with another group for hunting etc? Three days ago was
that event that happens every year, when the group suddenly enlarges – up to fourteen
this year – with youngsters.

Emperor Dragonfly
by Ian Kirk

Gloucester
Motorway Services lake: This is one of just two such service stations
which are built ecologically, serve artisan food, and have a delightful
sitting-out area with a lake about 30m long, hosting a surprising number of
birds, damsel- and dragonflies. Yesterday these included a moorhen pair with
some very small chicks tottering on floating edge vegetation; dozens of
swallows and house martins hunting over and drinking from the water; many
Common Blue damselflies; and numbers of Emperor, Blacktailed Skimmer and Common
Darter dragonflies. The Emperor males were fighting over the water – every now
and then they collided with a loud, electrical zizzing sound as presumably
their vibrating wings caught together! The lake perimeter has many lovely
plants, currently including meadowsweet, a red mimulus, mints, purple
loosestrife, bullrush and flowering rush; and I would heartily recommend a stop
here not just for the fine architecture, good food and chilled atmosphere, but
for the meditative pleasure of observing the lake and its wildlife.

August

Whitethroat
by Andreas Trepte

Whitethroat
beauty: It’s funny how you can see a bird repeatedly yet not fully appreciate
its beauty. Today I saw a male and female Whitethroat pair nestled in hedgerow-
modest little brown warblers though with handsome white throats and perky crest
- but for the first time I fully saw, studied and appreciated their beautiful finely-patterned
chestnut lower wings neatly folded back and glowing almost orange ...was it the
light or their position that illuminated this to me?...

Rainbow: The sun was
nearly setting and the sky almost clear with a few high clouds, when we saw an
extraordinary rainbow outside: enormously high – because the sun was so low -
with an unusual darker orange-tinted cast to it, and an enigmatic quality
because absolutely no rain was evident!

Last
Swifts: The ninth of August and I thought our local swifts were long gone, but
last night six of them returned to dance together over the park at sunset. A
colleague wrote: ‘You're not
the only one to have this experience, I wonder what it means! I wonder if it
is parents coming back to persuade the remaining juveniles out of the nest
and once out, off they go? Fascinating.’

Chesil Beach from Portland
sketch by Lois 2009

August
trip to Chesil Beach

My annual car-camping trip this
year was to Chesil Beach west of Weymouth in Dorset. Chesil Beach is a massive
curving, continuous, dark gold, mainly flint shingle bank 29k long and up to
12m high, separated from the mainland for 13k along its easterly end by the
shallow Fleet Lagoon; starting near Bridport and ending where it curves up to
form the land bridge between Weymouth and the Isle of Portland.

Chesil Beachby Brian Robert Marshall

Its geological history is
complex, finalising in post-glacial pebble outwashes – a one-off construction
fining from east to west, but now without sufficient further pebble material to
sustain it. So now you aren’t supposed to remove any of the billions of
tempting and often unusual pebbles at your feet...

- Ferrybridge: I walked a mile or so west along the Chesil bank to
the first of many lonely fishing shacks facing the Fleet, and so had my first
experience of how tough it is to walk the loose, sinking shingle: if you commit
to continuing you have 13 non-stop exposed kilometres to trudge, great only if
you are training for the Foreign Legion...

-
The Swannery: I camped for three nights in the Swannery car park, which has the
generosity to be

Abbotsbury Swannery
by John E Lamper

free and unrestricted with adjacent toilets and cafe. In
gratitude I finally paid the £12 to enter Swannery proper, which turned out to
be far more interesting historically, scientifically, artistically than I
expected. It is the only swan-breeding establishment in the world,
started 700 years ago by the Abbotsbury monks, and then run continuously by the
same local family for the next 500 years, since the Reformation that destroyed
the abbey (...remnants of the abbey are scattered throughout the adjacent
village of Abbotsbury...). Using swanherds, the establishment learnt how to
overcome the swans’ natural territorial behaviour so the birds will agree to
nest in very close proximity.

Some delightful Swannery snippets: - A display
of a Gladstone bag the size of a swan (with a toy swan’s neck hanging out...) –
lift it to feel how heavy a real swan is. The sign warns you to brace your
knees, you mock and then try - it’s over two stone weight (30lb +)! A swan
skeleton shows how

Bouncing bomb
by Whaley Tim

extremely robust the birds’ bones are compared with most
birds.

- A photo shows how the famous
English ballerina Anna Pavlova’s dance troupe came to the Swannery in the 1920s
to practice ‘Swan Lake’ on the spot! I imagine the swan poo on their points...

- The Fleet was used for early
trials of the Dambusters’ Bouncing Bomb, and there is a broken example on
display – a huge black golf ball...

- A swan-shaped maze of living
willows was recently created. Often willow structures are rather disappointing,
but these consisted of majestic high arched tunnels, like walking through a
magnificent building.

-
Rooks: There were over 300 rooks feeding on the adjacent hills and roosting in
the woods above the car park. In the evenings they made that lovely crooning
sound that is so soothing - if you’re not too close!

-
Walking: One way and another I ended up walking almost the full length of Chesil
Beach, from the Swannery to West Bexington to Burton Bradstock near Bridport on
the bank itself, and along the Fleet Lagoon. Twice I swam off lonely stretches
of the bank’s seaward side, where it
drops in steep terraces to the waves and feels elemental...

Fleet Lagoon - 'Langton Herring Boats'

- The Fleet Lagoon is shallow brackish waters full of the fine grassy
threads of marine plant Eel Grass which is a nourishing food for many creatures
including swans. As you walk along there are occasional fishing shacks on the high
Chesil bank opposite, accessed from the mainland by the few small fishing boats
that are licensed to fish for the bass, eels, and other specialist fish in
these waters. Starting at East Fleet,
I visited the lovely little church by the coast path, now just the nave of the
village’s original church which was otherwise destroyed by the catastrophic
storm surge of 1824 which flooding over Chesil bank, submerged the church in
water

East Fleet Church
by Ian Hall

9m high, destroyed many other buildings, ships and lives, and reduced the
height of the bank itself by many metres. Further west is Moonfleet Manor Hotel, famous from the Victorian smuggling novel
‘Moonfleet’ which brings many tourists here. It’s one of those kindly
establishments that though smart, welcomes sweaty walkers and treats them like
royalty – kind Eastern European staff, homemade biscuits with your coffee,
apple sorbet garnished with watermelon eaten on the hot patio with a broadsheet
newspaper and a fashion magazine... and no signs as at the West Bexington and
Burton Bradstock (tho very nice) beach cafes to tell you ‘No shoes, no shirt –
no service!’ Then at Herbury there’s
a little headland into the Fleet that’s almost an island. Apparently in the
past the Weymouth beach donkeys were brought here every winter to graze
peacefully... The Fleet itself is home to much rare and strange marine life,
described in a fine Dorset County Council pamphlet, ‘The Fleet Lagoon: Wild,
weird and wonderful – Our Top 10’!

Knatchbull Arms, Stoke St Michael
by Maurice Pullin

-
Way back: I broke my return journey at the
tiny village of Stoke St Michael north
of Shepton Mallet and deep in Mendip quarrying country. I had a drink at the Knatchbull Arms pub, which astonished
with its wall boards describing an apparently true episode in 1942 when it
hosted a top-secret meeting of WW11’s top military, including Mountbatten,
Eisenhower and Patton, to discuss strategy! The then landlord revealed it a
decade later, saying he served them ‘tea and sandwiches’!

My last camp was planned for the adjacent
Moon Hill Quarry science centre car park, which I’d visited a few weeks earlier
on a geology field trip and thought – there’s a peaceful spot. What I hadn’t
realised was that this area of car park wasn’t just for the Science Centre in
its peaceful grounds, but part of the full-on adjacent working quarry. So I woke
at 6am surrounded by lights, action, quarrymen – scrambled from my duvet into
the front seat and drove off hell for leather in my sleep shirt... If you camp
‘wild’ then a certain amount of indignity is all part of the experience...

Yellow Horned-poppy
by Des Bowring

-
Shingle plants on Chesil Beach: On the sheltered landward side of
this great shingle bank are a fascinating and often unexpected selection of
generally prostrate plants, including Woody Nightshade ‘marinum’, Sea Pea,
Yellow Horned-poppy, Sea Campion and Convolvulus. I saw great swathes of
flowering Sea Pea by the Swannery – a robust member of the clover/pea family
with lovely strong magenta-purple flowers and large pinnate leaves which I’d
only seen before in Iceland and then we struggled to find just a couple of
plants. Further west was a similar abundance of spectacular flowering Yellow
Horned-poppy which I’d never seen before; the seeds forming
extremely long curving pods which must be the ‘horns’. And similarly Woody
Nightshade ‘marinum’ - who knew it as a successful prostrate plant in this
testing environment, the purple flowers and red translucent berries showing
brightly against the shingle?

Sea Pea
by Mike Pennington

I observed the following
strategies of clinging/advancing for prostrate plants on shingle:

·Tendrils: the Sea Pea’s sturdy leaves end in short
but powerful tendril that bind round a pebble to anchor the plant as it grows
outwards/onwards.

·Rooting: Many of the prostrate plants here push
down anchoring roots from their stems as they advance across the shingle.

·Weight: the ‘marinum’ variety of Woody Nightshade
looks just like its woodland cousin, except it is prostrate with fleshier
(presumably succulent) leaves. Its stems are sturdy and woody, and I assume it
is the pure weight of its parts that keeps it grounded in high winds and lets
it sprawl onwards in large mats across the shingle.

A friend wrote, ‘Re the
Woody Nightshade, following a recent course on Scottish coastal plants, I too
was amazed that so many familiar woodland, field and hedgerow species have a
'maritime' version battling the elements on our beaches and saltmarshes in a positively
Churchillian fashion.’

-
Why Car Camp? I’m 68 and still car-camping – why? Logistically this means that I put
down the back seats of my Fiesta and insert sofa cushions to make a bed, as at
around 5 foot I’m small enough to lie full length in this space. In the
passenger footwell go a big bowl plus plate, mug, cutlery, and big bottle of
water. Food is tucked in the gap under the seat. I wash in the bowl and pretty
much eat cold picnic food and drink water for 4 days. Mostly I park ‘wild’ in
small lay-by’s or rough parking areas without restrictions, but then I need to
be up at about 5.30 to beat the dog walkers and have the privacy to wash, brush
and dress – sometimes I’ll go back for a snooze once I’m ‘respectablised’.
Finding early-opening loos is important, but otherwise peeing au plein air is
fine. I sort out my backpack requirements and am off for the day walking – I
live all day outdoors. (If I’d been tough enough I’d have loved to have carried
all my gear and slept in the open, but I’ve never liked feeling like a
packhorse (even my binoculars have to be ultra lightweight), and now I’m older
I’ve found I’m not hardy enough to sleep on the ground even with a mat. And I
do like the car with its waterproofness, warmth, light, door locks). People wonder
if I’m scared – mostly no, alert more like, there are often strange sounds and
interruptions at night when the adrenaline courses for a while.

So why not get a little camper van? Or park
in camp sites? Or rent a little chalet? Because I’ve realised the fundamental
things I want, are to be off the radar, and beholden to no-one. When my
car is parked it attracts nobody’s interest, and when I lie down in it,
passers-by can’t even see there is anyone in it. In a ‘wild’ spot I feel unnoticed
– off the radar – but in an orthodox camp site I am very visible again; and a
proper camper van also immediately makes you noticed. And renting a place, though
lovely and something I’ve often done,
means I am beholden – to the owners to keep it nice, and all that
psychological palaver. It is a mental thing – to have rest and relief from the
persistent pressure of other people’s eyes and expectations. I love a little
chat and interchange with others while I’m walking, but mostly I spend hours on
my own ‘off the radar’, and that’s what I yearn for.

Sea Mills - from Trym out to Avon
by William Avery

Swimming at
Sea Mills: One way and another I managed to get in quite a lot of swimming this
summer in various, sometimes odd, places. The strangest has been in the Avon at
Sea Mills where the River Trym comes out, a couple of miles above the Avon’s
entry into the Bristol Channel. Both Trym and Avon are still tidal here and at
low tide enormously steep banks of soft mud are revealed that could pretty much
swallow you up. Tides are swift, there is quite a lot of shipping, and if you
were swept downstream there is nowhere to safely climb out, so it is dangerous
any time except just before and at high tide, and then only accompanied by
someone else. I have a friend who is into this sort of mad stuff and I knew the
little jetty poking into the Trym which allows you to enter the water easily
and mud-free, but from the bank it all still looked both scary and grubby. However
we rendezvoused, waited till all the boats needing to get in and out of the high-tide
lock gates upstream had passed by, and climbed down into the water... What a
difference! Immediately it felt extraordinarily peaceful, beautiful, serene,
clean-feeling and looking... But beware - the tide turns with secretive
swiftness and start tugging you downstream, so then there was a quick race back
to the jetty and land...

Starling murmuration
by Walter Baxter

Mini-murmuration: Mid-afternoon
down on the salt marshes a flock of about 250 starlings were doing full-on
shape-shifting murmurations between rests along the hedgerows – creating the
classic beautiful streaming clouds and swirling patterns... To see this in
broad daylight in such a relatively small group is unusual.

September

Urban Fox: At
midday a fox stood for some time on the pavement up the road from our house before
turning and heading into a front garden... it looked very thin and rather
pathetic, a youngster I think. Although foxes are common round here, it is
still surprising to see one out in the street in the middle of the day except
in hard winters…

Bird on hay bale
by Viault

A
Tickenham bird walk: On the meadow lowlands swallow and house martin
flew, including pairs apparently kissing in midair – probably parents
food-passing to young; buzzards, kestrel and wheatear all using the big
cylindirical hay bales as lookout perching spots... High up on the ridge with
its great views down the Bristol Channel six ravens rolled and displayed, a hobby
and a kestrel fought in mid-air and the hobby then did a long shallow stoop to catch
a dragonflies...

Last Swift? On the 13
September we saw a swift flying over our house – the latest I have seen a swift, though the record dates are rather later.

Cassini in testNASA

From
Cassini: Last week I watched a wonderful Horizon programme on the Cassini space
mission to Saturn, and its final hours on 15 September as it plunged into
Saturn’s atmosphere after 27 years of faithful reporting on the planet, its
moons and its rings. One of the most heart-stopping moments was a picture
Cassini had taken looking back at
Earth through a Saturnian landscape – just a tiny bright dot so far away, but
oh – the significance of it.

On another note – it was
marvellous to see an almost equal mix of men and women scientists making up the
international teams whose life this

Saturn from CassiniNASA

had been for three decades and more, including
women heads of photography and engineering – the latter the people who brought
us the reams of astonishing pictures, and who kept Cassini on track through
thick and thin, including guiding it to new and unexpected tasks like close the
exploration of moon Enceladus. But when Cassini finally disappeared, it wasn’t
only the women in tears...

Abundance: Today the
salt marsh was alive with scores, probably hundreds of meadow pipits, as well
as abundant linnets, pied wagtails and starlings, and single whinchats,
wheatears, chiffchaff and skylarks... There is something so wonderful about
abundance in Nature, and it is definitely something we feel is threatened...

Half loving it, half not...

October

Bird
Ringing at Walton Moor, 2.10: A colleague invited me to a
morning’s bird ringing at Walton Moor Reserve just inland from Clevedon and
Portishead, with another ringer who has done this work weekly for decades. They
have a hut deep in the heart of the reserve, and a round of about seven net
sites to be patrolled every 45 minutes
of so (we were there for six hours and went round about seven times). The
little birds are carefully untangled, put in cloth bags like old-fashioned gym
bags, and brought back to the hut to be weighed, sexed, wing-measured, and fat
stores noted. We gathered 58 in total including tree creeper, lesser redpoll,
bullfinch and goldcrest, and I was allowed to hold them at the end and release
them. And I saw the ringers’ nemesis – the flat fly parasites that resist
crushing...

I felt a dichotomy of emotions
that is probably not unusual: on the one hand tremendous privilege and
excitement to be allowed so close to these beautiful creatures. But as someone
who doesn’t like zoos or animals kept in any sort of captivity –even fish in
aquaria – I had an visceral repugnance for the birds entangled and sometimes
struggling in the nets, the need to unravel them and bag them, all the
handling... Dave gave me a long talk about the scientific value of ringing, but
how many birders disapprove of it even though they value the knowledge it
gives. I know it gives vital information, and I could see how apparently
fragile but actually incredibly robust the birds were – after all they are
built to survive predator attacks and all sorts of accidents and mishaps. So I
shall just live with this conflict of feelings...

Rackety Magpies: Early evening and ten magpies
were racketing about together through the treetops... youngsters I expect like
rowdy teenagers.

Starling
bath: At
Pilning Wetlands a crew of about 30 starlings settled onto a shallow pool’s
edge in a line amongst the lapwings and ruff, and started the most vigorous
bout of splashing and washing – water flying everywhere, a delightful sight.

Cornwall: - I was by the sea in St Ives as the major
Storm Ophelia approached. It was quite strange

St Ives Harbour
by Mike Crowe

– the sky remained cheerfully blue
as the wind grew and grew till it was completely slicing off the tops of the
waves and hurling them in horizontal slabs of spray...

- In the evening from the top floor of
our rented house, we could watch two grey seals come in to feed in the harbour
at high tide. Big crowds came out to watch them under the harbour lights as
they swam up to the quay and begged by a fishing boat...

- At the Hayle estuary I watched a
sparrowhawk neatly turn completely sideways, wings outstretched, to fly through
a narrow hedgerow gap...

My First
Sea Watch: I did my first ever ‘sea watch’ with about ten other people today, on
the Severn Beach esplanade facing the Bristol Channel. This is when bird
watchers gather during storms at known lookouts, to watch for ocean birds like
petrels, gannets, shearwaters and this time a tiny grey phalarope, driven
closer to land by powerful winds. (To put this another way: nutters seek out
the most exposed places they know in the worst weather of the year, to stand in
violent wind and rain for some hours with telescopes glued to their eyes) Storm
Brian was

Leach’s Petrel
by Richard Crossley

approaching – another storm with lots of powerful south-to-south-westerly
wind but no rain, so a relatively ‘fair-weather’ experience for a newbie like
me. Others let me use their telescopes to follow the action out at sea, and I finally
managed to see a Leach’s Petrel with just my binoculars as it flew in close to
shore. This little bird, just six inches long but adapted for a constant life
on the ocean, was so diminutive it would disappear behind each wave crest as it
skimmed close to the sea’s surface.... It was an exciting and addictive
experience!

Generous
Ivy Blossom: At Marshfield on this warm and still day, Red Admiral butterflies were out

Red Admiral on Ivy blossom
by Dave Dunford

in force, particularly on ‘selected’ flowering ivy bushes – some bushes being much
more popular than others in Nature’s mysterious way; and the numbers of Red
Admirals I counted rapidly climbed from scores to hundreds. The blossom was also
being enjoyed by Brimstone butterflies, bees and hoverflies: ivy is a generous plant for birds
and insects with its late-flowering blooms, and the resulting black berries
that feed creatures right through to Spring.

More late
flowers:
At Clevedon, south of the harbour – bristly ox-tongue and wild mustard still
flowered brightly.

Siskin
by Estormiz

Siskin
Squadron: At Aust Warth a small flock of four siskins shot away from the mud-and-reed
bank of the river inlet, little birds flying in neat formation like a squadron
with the lovely black-&-yellow pattern of their wing uppers on display. This
was a most odd place to find them – but I’d noticed that the seed heads of the salt-marsh
reed beds must have been unusually tasty that day, because reed buntings were munching
on them in a way I hadn't seen before - as though they were really delicious -
and were joined by blue tits and sparrows who rarely feed out there. So maybe the siskins,
probably on migration, came down for a tasty reed-seed-feed too...

Ballroom dancing...
by Che

Strictly
Birdwatching: I recently took up Pilates exercise, as well as becoming a ‘Strictly
Come Dancing’ fan, and have been intrigued by how closely dance technique
mirrors Pilates, including the ‘relaxed shoulders, long neck, strong core’
aspects. But also the instructions for the ‘firm frame’ for arms in ballroom
hold - supported from the back muscles not the shoulders - could as well apply
to birdwatchers lifting and holding binoculars... I am now consciously practicing
this technique in the field!

November

Winter Heliotropeby Dave Hitchborne

Late
Autumn colours& flowers... At this late date there is still an unusual
amount of gorgeous

Autumn tree colour including in maple, beech, oak and birch.
Down the Avon Gorge, hazels held catkins and pretty pink winter heliotrope
lined the path in profusion.

A Winter Bird Trip to Devon, including:

Cirl Buntingby Paco Gomez

- Cirls at Labrador Bay, a coastal farmland
reserve high on the cliffs just south of Teignmouth, dedicated to
reviving the rare Cirl Bunting, which suffered dramatically from modern farming
practices. For the last few years they have regularly fed the birds, and we
visited this spot where about twenty Cirls were sunning on sheltered hedgerow and
waiting for the grain to arrive! It was many people’s (including mine) first
view of these lovely birds, with their striped heads with olive surround.

- Clennon Valley Reserve, Torbay, a modest urban-fringe reserve with
woodland, stream and lake to look for a Yellow-

Yellow-browed Warbler
by Hugh Venable

browed Warbler. We didn’t find
it - though it had been there earlier and would be seen later - but we did find
a Firecrest and Kingfisher. I like these modest reserves, and I like looking
for particular species even if they’re not found because you get to understand
their habits and habitats... or to guess anyway – for instance, why is this
rare little foreign visitor so often found in this particular spot...?

- South Molton Reserve, Thurlstone –where a large rock stack out to
sea had Cormorants and Shags sitting together for useful comparison, and a
Heron unusually huddled high on the sheltered side.

Wood Blewitby Gail Hapmshire

- The long flat stretch of
shingle beach at Slapton Ley, with Shags
and Red-throated Diver, and surprisingly
close inshore – a raft of 25 female and two male Common Scoters bobbing on calm
waters and so easy to view (usually they are but specks out to sea...) and a
dolphin diving further out...

- Then into the reserve round
the Ley (lagoon) behind the beach –
strikingly calmer and warmer, full of birds. Along the path were pale purple Wood Blewit fungi, and abundant rows of spiky Butcher’s Broom bushes full of red
berries. Black-headed Gulls on the lagoon were washing with great splashings –
the spray flying silver against the bright low sun...

- Steps Bridge and Dunsford Nature Reserve on Dartmoor’s

Butcher's Broomby Bernard Dupont

north-east edge: ancient woodland along
the River Teign where a lucky few saw the rare Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
showing fleetingly in low tree growth...

- Matford Marsh, wetlands unobtrusively tucked between big roads on
the commercial fringes of Exeter, where kind locals pointed out an American
Wigeon on the banks of a stream, its

American Wigeonby Tony Hisgett

dark green face pattern almost black
against a greyish face.

Starry Starry Nights: In my life I have been to some remote and far-flung
places. Having read other travellers’ descriptions of seeing wonderful starry
night skies I looked forward to experiencing them myself in such places - but
ended up being quite disappointed when the reality was much less dazzling than
expectation... Yet strangely the most beautiful starry skies I have ever seen -
have been on the Lizard in Cornwall about seven years ago, and during the two
nights we just spent birding at Hope Cove in Devon. Both these seaside places were
deeply quiet at night, their skies profoundly dark, and the heavens truly were
a rich, deep wonderland of gem brilliance, flung with an extravagant hand...

‘Faces’: There was an article in the latest Bristol
Naturalists’ Society magazine on how genetic study of British tits shows their bills
are getting longer as they adapt to pecking food from garden feeders. It added:
'Changes in specific gene sequences in
the British birds were found to closely match human genes that determine face
shape.' There’s something strangely pleasing about this relationship of a
bird’s ‘face’ to our own...

Hawfinchby Francesco Veronesi

Hawfinch
banter: An article in the Bristol Naturalists’ Society magazine included a
reference to

hawfinches as ‘chunky’. I indulged in some banter with the
esteemed author with an email: ‘Oy, who
are you calling 'chunky'? We prefer 'well built'... Yours, A Hawfinch.’

He replied: ‘Very funny! The portly Hawfinch needs all
the support it can get (quite a strong twig anyway...).’

December

Snowy MarshfieldDecember 2017

Snowy
Marshfield: Today it was snowing properly, so I went up to Marshfield (a great
birding area on nearby Cotswold uplands) to experience the full winter
wonderland. Plenty of birds near and far, but the little tits, robins and
bullfinches, seen from close up, were small hearts of colour in an otherwise
powerfully monochromatic world...

Shepperdine
View: Snow on the Welsh side, soft pearly light, estuary as still as we’d
ever seen it with floating birds leaving delicate wakes of light on dark or
dark on light ripples...

Cribbs
Moorhens: At Cribbs Causeway, our large nearby out-of-town retail centre, three moorhens
were browsing on grassy verges in the middle of the dual carriageways and
superstores . Though I frequently drive through this area I haven't seen
moorhens or anything similar there before, and wondered where they could be
based – they need their water and aren’t known for random searches. One
colleague said there were a variety of small hidden wet areas within the Cribbs
complex, and another replied, ‘That
Cribbs spot has produced some strange sightings. Osprey over Apr 2015, a mini
murmuration of Starling in Oct the same year. A Merlin in Jan 14 and a Red Kite
in April.’

New
Passage reeds: The stand of
tall dried reeds along the tidal river shimmied stiffly in the breeze...

View from Aust Wharf

Sociology at Aust
roadside: At Aust Wharf on the Severn Estuary (site of the
discontinued ferry crossing to Wales and in the shadow of the first Severn
bridge), the small access road loops out to run parallel to the sea shore for
about a kilometre behind the salt marsh, with magnificent views of the estuary,
Wales and both Estuary bridges. A two-three mile walk down-river takes you to
Pilning Wetlands, New Passage and Severn Beach; upriver is access to a rough
beach and the geologically famous stripy Aust Cliffs. I come here regularly to
bird watch, walk, sketch... and always there are people parked up. It’s not
just camper vans, cyclists, dog walkers, older couples: by far the majority are
working men in their firms’ cars and vans, here to get away, eat lunch, have a
snooze, have a fag, listen to the radio... I like their good taste, that they
choose to come to a place of such beauty and peacefulness. (though I imagine if
they articulated this at work they might get mocked?)

Blackbird on crabtreeDec 2017

New
Passage Blackbird and Wagtail: On the little road up to New Passage is a
small ornamental

crab apple right by the path, still bearing red-orange fruits
now soft and ‘bletted’. The last two times I’ve walked by, a blackbird has been
gorging on the crabs and taking no notice of me even when I was less than a
metre away.

On the inland side of the sluice that
blocks a small river from the tidal estuary, very fine algal particles were
floating down and gathering in a green scum, on which a grey wagtail was
happily pottering and feeding...

Like the
Rings of Saturn: On the salt marshes today was a pool of water coloured clear
brown from the peat, with a beige frothy scum just like the head on a pint of Guiness.
Persistent winds had blown line after fine line of froth to one side where they
had frozen into an area of clear ice, where the lines built up into curved
striations as fine, refined and defined as the rings of Saturn, or growth lines
on a bracket fungus...

Moonbow: We were sitting in my
friends’ chalet high in the woods looking down across the moors to the Bristol
Channel, when a rainbow appeared stretching from the bottom to the top of our
view. It made my friend remember some years before when he had been sailing up
the Channel at night with a full moon behind. Suddenly a moonbow appeared in
front – the full height of a rainbow, but the bands picked out only in shades
of silver greys... a rare phenomenon.

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About me

I’m Lois Pryce, born 1949, was an architect and voluntary sector worker, currently retired, live in north Bristol in a very small community group. Like walking (mostly alone and mostly by the sea) and camping in my car, bird-watching, geology, art – they all go well together!(Note I’m not the adventurer Lois Pryce of ‘Lois on the Loose’ – she’s my niece)Contact: loisapryce@gmail.com

COPYRIGHT: All writings, photos and artworks in this site are my own and are my copyright, unless specifically credited otherwise (generally from Wikimedia Commons). If you use any of my content, please credit it to me under the Creative Commons copyright license.